The Shattered Gates (11 page)

 “You speak English?” John asked.

The man lifted his head as if in challenge. “I know all of the words. How can you know them?”

“I’m American,” John replied. It was an answer, which, he realized belatedly, assumed a great deal of knowledge on the part of the man: that a majority of Americans spoke English, for example. Or even what America was.

“You are from that place?” the man asked.

“Yes. America. We speak English there.” The conversation wasn’t going as smoothly as John had hoped, but at least they were talking. “Do you know where it is?”

“In the Kingdom of the Night, beneath the Palace of the Day. With a gold key, through a gold doorway.” The man watched John’s face closely as he spoke, as if he were uttering some kind of secret code.

“I have no idea what you mean by that.” John decided to just be honest.

The man scowled.

“If you are from that place, then say what lies beside it,” he said.

“Beside it? You mean its borders?”

The man nodded, and John took it for an affirmative.

“The Atlantic Ocean to the east; Pacific Ocean to the west; Canada, north; Mexico, south. Is that what you mean?” John asked.

“Atlantic, Pacific, Canada, Mexico.” He recited the names and nodded his head. At last he asked, with great incredulity, “How can you be here?”

“I don’t know. I just am.” John didn’t even consider attempting to explain. “Do you know how I could get back?”

The man shook his head. During the course of the conversation, his arms had slowly lowered back down to his sides. He took a few steps closer and John decided that he could afford to meet his new companion halfway. He was bigger, and he wasn’t already injured. The odds favored him.

Up close, John could smell the wet wool of the man’s coat. John guessed that he himself smelled much worse.

 “Only the Holy Gateway can link the worlds,” the man said, “and only Kahlil’im can cross it.”

“Kahlil’im?” John was pretty sure that the Holy Gateway had to be something like the yellow ruin he, Laurie, and Bill had found in the mountains. “Who’s Kahlil’im?”

“Maybe me. Others are training in Rathal’pesha hel vun’im’ati lafti’ya pom’an.” The man didn’t seem to notice that he had slipped out of English.

“I didn’t really understand all of that. You were speaking... What’s your language called?”

“Basawar. The world and the word are one.” The man smiled as he said this. He had a nice smile, the kind that New York advertising agencies would have loved to plaster all over cereal boxes.

“Yura’hir—” The man caught himself this time. “I’m sorry. I only speak these words in training. It’s hard to remember.”

“You’re doing better than I would.” John shifted uncomfortably. His feet were starting to get cold.

“You were saying that you are Kahlil’im?” John reminded him.

“I may be. Someday.” The man frowned at the crushed snowdrift where he had fallen. “I still must learn how to make myself go where I should and not to bleed so much.” He touched his right forearm.

“A Kahlil’im must be teaching you, then?”

“A Kahlil,” the young man corrected him offhandedly. “Kahlil’im means many; Kahlil is only one. There are no Kahlil’im left,” the man went on. “The last was torn to pieces between the worlds. What I learn is from the priests who keep Ushmana’lam, the holiest books. They can read the words, but they... ” he paused, “they cannot do everything the words say.”

“So there are no Kahlil’im left?”

“Issin,” the young man said, then caught himself. “There are none.”

“So there’s no way to open the Holy Gateway?” John continued.

“None.”

John noticed that the man spoke certain words with the same accent he had detected in Kyle. Now that he thought about it, John realized that the man resembled his old roommate physically as well. He wasn’t as muscular or as tall, and he lacked tattoos and scars, but he could have passed for Kyle’s younger brother. He had the same dark eyes and full mouth.

“There isn’t some kind of key that would do it?” John hoped his leading questions didn’t seem as obvious to the man as they did to him.

“A key is given to Kahlil,” the man said, “but only Kahlil can use it.”

So Kyle must have been a Kahlil. That explained the key that had come in the mail. The words ‘ripped to pieces between the worlds’ made John feel suddenly sorry that he hadn’t treated Kyle better. He wondered if being ripped to pieces had been a direct result of his theft of the key, then stopped himself. He already had enough guilt about bringing Laurie and Bill to this wasteland. He didn’t need Kyle’s death on his conscience as well.

He asked, “So, do you have a key yet?”

“No, just a black blood knife.”

“Does the knife open anything?” John knew he was grasping, but he supposed it was better to ask than not.

“Cuts,” the man answered.

He shoved his hands into his coat pockets. For a moment, John thought he would produce the knife, but he didn’t. He just kept his hands tucked into the coat’s protection. John felt a chill across the back of his neck as the wind picked up.

“It’s cold, and I have been gone too long. I must go home, or I will be whipped.” The man started to walk north through the snow.

“Wait!” John followed him. “I need to know how I can return to my own home.”

“Have you been gone too long as well?” He didn’t stop, but he slowed enough for John to catch up with him.

“Yes, I’ve been gone for a long time now.” John decided that he could afford to walk with him for at least an hour before he had to turn back to the shelter.

“You must miss your family.” The man wasn’t looking at John but at the mountains.

“I miss my home.”

The man paused and studied John. He said, “I could bring you with me to Rathal’pesha, but...”

“But what?”

“I think they would burn you.”

A chill sank through John’s guts.

“Why would they burn me?”

“Maybe you aren’t from the other world. Maybe you’re a spy for the Fai’daum. Maybe you’re a witch. They can find reasons as easily as turning over stones.” The man began walking again.

“I speak English. I know where America is. That convinced you that I was telling the truth, didn’t it?” John asked.

“No,” the man said, “I believe you because I want to. You seem honest to me, but Ushman Dayyid and Ushman Nuritam don’t want to believe anyone. They don’t want to believe me, and I have the God’s own bones. They would burn you right away, and then you would never go home.”

“Would you be willing to help me get home?”

“I might.” Again the man looked up at the mountains. “I don’t know what I can do for you.”

“Could you come back here and tell me more about your world? That would at least help me not get myself burned.” John kept doggedly at it. He could not let this resource go without a fight, for all their sakes.

“Will you tell me about yours?” the man countered.

“Of course.”

“Good.” The man smiled at him. For a few minutes they strode along quietly together, side by side. John knew he had to turn back soon, but he didn’t want to. His hope of finding a way home rested entirely with this man about whom he knew next to nothing.

“Can I ask what your name is, or what I should call you?” John asked at last.

“Are you turning back now?” the man asked.

“I was thinking of it. Why?”

“Some traders only exchange names with a new friend just before they part. Then, if their families have bad blood between them, it will not have ruined their time traveling together.”

“I didn’t know that,” John said.

“I hadn’t told you my name so that you would keep walking with me.” The man glanced sideways at him. “It’s good to have some company on such a long walk, but I shouldn’t bring you any further. It won’t be safe once we reach the river.”

“Well, my name is John.” John held out his hand, and the man blinked at it. Then he seemed to remember something and reached out to grip John’s hand firmly.

“I am Ushiri Ravishan’inRathal’pesha.”

“I don’t think I’ll remember all that,” John admitted.

“You only need to call me Ravishan. The rest is title and place. It is not who I am.”

“Ravishan,” John repeated the name. “Will I see you again?”

The man nodded. “I must go now, but I will try to come back in four days.”

“I’ll see you then. Goodbye.” John gave him a brief wave.

“Tumah.” Ravishan briefly lifted his hands to his chest and then turned and continued walking north through the little rises and valleys of snow. John watched until he disappeared into the dark line of the distant trees.

John turned back. He brushed the snow back over both his and Ravishan’s tracks as he went. His body bristled with an excited energy, making him want to go quickly and carelessly. But he forced himself to be thorough, to cover his tracks and slowly wind his way back to the shelter. He couldn’t afford to take chances.

A lot of things could go wrong in four days.

Chapter Nine

“Loshai,” John said in response to Ravishan’s gesture at the pale, blue afternoon sky. Ravishan smiled his cereal box smile.

The spring air was cool but not cold. The last of the snow had melted away, leaving the ground carpeted in pale, mossy leaves and grass shoots. White leaf-buds dotted the black branches of the trees above them.

They had moved their shelter to higher ground when runoff from the mountains flooded the lower lands. Water rolled slowly between the higher stands of trees and washed far out to the east, until it spilled down the steep walls of the chasm in an immense waterfall. West of their camp John had found a deep slow moving river, where the fishing seemed particularly good. As he often did, Ravishan had appeared from the thin air and joined him on the river bank. Today they indulged in an impromptu language lesson.

“Loshai’hir pesha’an sa?” Ravishan asked and John concentrated on his voice. John didn’t want to hear the words as much as see the images they represented. He wanted to understand them, not in the slow manner of matching their meanings to English equivalents, but as words in their own right.

 It was a difficult thing to do. The inflections and pauses of Basawar contained such subtlety. Sometimes John found himself listening to the language with the same uncomprehending appreciation that he had for pure music.

“Iss. Loshai’hir holima’an,” John finally answered.

The sky is white?

No, the sky is blue.

It was such a simple exchange. John wanted to be better than this. He needed to be better if he ever hoped to get into the city of Amura’taye, much less reach the massive, walled monastery of Rathal’pesha and the key that would take them home.

If he could just find work in Amura’taye, he might be able to buy medicine for Bill, or at least food beyond what John hunted and the scraps that Ravishan secreted to them in his coat pockets.

Then there was the matter of the keys and the gateway. He had steadily learned, through his conversations with Ravishan, that the payshmura priests kept the keys somewhere in Rathal’pesha. There were maps to the gateways as well. Ravishan hadn’t seen either, but he had overheard Ushman Nuritam talking to Ushman Dayyid about them.

“One more question?” Ravishan asked.

“One more,” John agreed. They had been talking for hours. Ravishan would have to get home soon. He had already stayed out too late with John on too many previous days.

John pulled up the delicate piece of netting that Ravishan had brought him. Two nearly transparent, white fish flopped against the fine mesh. John pulled them free and dropped them into the reed basket with the others. They were tiny fish. All of them together were hardly enough to feed him alone.

“Yura’hir li’ati pashim’um sa?” Ravishan smiled sleepily and yawned as he asked the question. He loved slurring his words or disguising them to challenge John.

“Yura’ati pashim’um sa?” John asked thoughtfully. He could see the pleased gleam in Ravishan’s lowered eyes at stumping him.

“Sa?” Ravishan prompted.

“Du.” John nodded. “Li’im pashim, pashim’sho.” Yes, we are friends, great friends.

Ravishan broke into a grin at the answer. It pleased him when he could confound John, but it delighted him much more when John succeeded.

“Laman’Jahn’hir, domu’ya,” Ravishan complimented him, not only affirming John’s progress, but adding a scholar’s honorific to his name. It struck John as quite an exaggeration. However, Ravishan seemed to take great pleasure in addressing him as Laman. John guessed it was the same kind of humor that fueled the widespread phenomenon of three-hundred-pound giants nicknamed ‘Tiny.’

“Li’hir renma’ya.” Ravishan leaned back against a tree and closed his eyes.

John knew from Ravishan’s posture as much as his words that Ravishan was tired.

His right arm was wrapped in white bandages, and soft, blue shadows hung beneath his eyes. He breathed slowly and deeply, as if he were falling asleep. His lips parted slightly, and his hands hung limp. When he relaxed completely like this, John became acutely aware of how attractive Ravishan was. And also how very young he seemed.

John knew that he was only five years older than Ravishan, but those five years made a great difference. At seventeen, Ravishan was physically close to adulthood. He stood nearly as tall as John. His body was muscular and graceful from years of training in the monastery. Only a little of the softness of boyhood remained in his face.

Yet his affection was so strong and uninhibited, it seemed very childlike. By nature, Ravishan was friendly and outgoing. So much so that, at times, John had to remind himself that Ravishan probably had no idea of how flirtatious his behavior might seem. More than likely he was like this with any adult who showed him kindness. His long smiles and lingering gaze were simply the affectations of a lonely teenager. And he showed traces of adolescent rebelliousness as well. For one thing, he loved slipping away from his practices to meet with his new, secret friend.

“I don’t want to say I am a milkman.” Ravishan spoke without opening his eyes.

“What?” John didn’t really see the significance of the statement.